Combining 3D printing with electronics printing

Via Nextbigfuture.com:

The combination of FDM 3D printing and printed electronics technologies can provide benefits over traditional prototyping, manufacturing and field repair processes. Performance and functionality of products can be improved in two ways: 3D printers enable lighter weight mechanical structures; and conformal electronics printed directly onto the structure frees up space for additional payload. In turn, the process has a positive impact on the environment by using fewer materials.

Next big thing: writing the software that integrates electronics with 3D printing.

Revolutionary "Smart Wing" Created for UAV Model Demonstrates 3D Printing is Merged with Printed Electronics

Advocating U.S. manufacturing jobs through 3D printing

Michael Heisenberg at Seeking Alpha has an opinion post about the decline of American manufacturing and how to turn the tide. The solution: get the 3D printing industry going in the US. Interestingly, he cites the iPhone as an example of how America lost the battle. (As he talks about the iPhone, I suggest you read my manifesto Death to centralized manufacturing, long live 3D printing--or why Apple should venture into printers.)

Obama's leapfrog is to turn America into the Global leader in local production by investing heavily in 3D printing and the maker class. In the same way that the Chinese government invested in glass factories that ultimately won business for iPhone production, America can start manufacturing again by setting up centers of low cost, mass customized production via 3D printing and this should be done locally. America's innovative class is already leading in 3D printing with the Maker Movement, making waves and gathering a following. 

What is missing is ubiquity and lower costs. As a number of commenters discussed on Fred Wilson's AVC blog, cost and ubiquity still stand in the way of an explosion in 3D printing but it will come and when it does, America should want to be at the forefront because 3D printing can disrupt the current global supply chain. Yes, disrupt the current global supply chain. 

Already, private companies are leading the way, 3D Systems (Nasdaq: DDD, Objet (in IPO process) and Shapeways are driving the costs of 3D printing lower (ironically Objet (Israel) and Shapeways (great prezi)(Netherlands) are both non-US companies) and making mass customization cheaper and more accessible. However, if you want to leapfrog, you need to go all-in. By subsidizing and encouraging the building of local infrastructure, retraining middle class manufacturing to start and operate 3D printing facilities and by building global/local supply chains by investing massively in 3D printing facilities, Obama can start altering the global supply chain dynamics.

How Barack Obama Can Bring Manufacturing Jobs Back To America (seekingalpha.com)

3D printing special at Bloomberg Businessweek: space, home, organs and more

I missed this a couple of weeks ago, but Bloomberg Businessweek had a special about 3D printing. They need to cater to their target audience but I'm sure that these articles are well-appreciated by CEOs and non-CEOs alike!

3D Printing Coming to the Manufacturing Space—and Outer Space

As more companies use 3D printers to make finished products, not prototypes, NASA may use them to make parts and tools on the International Space Station

3D Printer Makers Aim at Home Market

As vendors such as 3D Systems and Stratasys begin selling devices that let consumers print out toys and replacement parts, will kids start producing their own toys?

Bioprinting: The 3D Future of Organ Transplants?

Printers that use human cells to create functional, living tissue may ultimately facilitate organ transplants for an aging population

Slide Show: Ten Products Printed in 3D

Using silver, glass, and plastics, 3D printers can turn out toys, jewelry, dresses, furniture—and even a hybrid auto

Podcast: Using a Printer to Make Products

Today it's possible to print airplane parts, jewelry, and shoes, much like you'd print a document. Companies such as Boeing are using 3D printing—also known as additive manufacturing— to make complex parts for military jets

CEO Guide to 3-D Printing (businessweek.com)

3D printing and construction

3D printing is traditionally a tabletop enterprise: printed products are about a few inches big in each direction. However, another application for 3D printing is emerging that's quite a step up from, say, replacing your missing LEGO bricks: construction.

Txchnologist has a report about a concrete-excreting printer that builds houses. (beware, this website is a pr/marketing front for GE, so if you get a sudden urge to buy a jet engine you know why)

Khoshnevis calls his technique “Contour Crafting” and it operates on roughly the same principle as consumer 3D printers like MakerBot’s Thing-O-Matic. His robot pours out a trail of viscous concrete while tracing along the footprint of a wall. As the nozzle sweeps back and forth, the layers rapidly build, with the lower ones hardening enough to support the increasing weight. Its speed puts construction workers to shame. “We are talking about a technology that can build a square foot of wall in less than 20 seconds,” Khoshnevis says. At that rate, Contour Crafting can put together a whole room in just an hour.

Size is now the only thing holding back the technology. “We have a machine that can build a structure about 23 feet long, about 7 feet high and about 15 feet wide at this point,” says Khoshnevis. He estimates that a full-scale printer would break down into three pieces and be small enough to fit onto a flatbed truck. All construction would happen on site. First, a designer would bring a digital blueprint for the house on a thumb drive and plug it into the printer while workers loaded it with concrete. Once the printer was activated, humans would play a supporting role, laying out supplies for the robotic gripper arm and preparing fresh batches of concrete. Humans would also install the windows and doors, since the task is so easy it’s not worth automating, Khoshnevis previously said.

Some modern skyscrapers are already built using a semi-automated process where the central concrete core is continually built up, day and night; however that method doesn't allow for any customizations like the one above.

Although fully automated, fully customizable construction is still a few steps away, a Chinese company called China Broad Group built a 30-story building in 15 days using mostly prefabricated materials (see video up top). The main benefits are not only rapid construction, but also a decreased use of materials and operational energy:

We have been closely tracking China's Broad Group and their prefabricated factory mass produced 'Can be Built' skyscraper technology. Six months ago they had earthquake certified a scale model of their 30 story building. now they have built an actual 30 story building in 15 days at the end of 2011.

This is one of the key technologies to watch for the next decade or two. The reason is the construction methods use far less cement and are more energy efficient. They will also enable faster urbanization of the developing world (not just China.) With state backing Broad Group will have this technology in use for more high rise commercial construction by 2020. This is part of the mundane singularity of technologies that mostly exist now and can high impact on the world. The buildings are five times more energy efficient in operation and use about 6 times less cement.

(Via Nextbigfuture.com)

3D printer uses paper as ink

One excellent aspect of this is that you don't need to add structural support while printing, something required with resin or plastic. I wonder though what the impact could be on the accuracy of the products, caused by margin of error in paper thickness.

This solid model was created using a 3D printer - no folding required. 

Most 3D printers work by laying down layers of a resin or heated plastic material to gradually render a 3D object created by a 3D modeling program. But Mcor Technology's Matrix 3D printer uses paper as the "ink." The technology is a greener way to build 3D prototypes than plastic-jet printers and other 3D printing technologies, and for design shops that keep their 3D printers busy, operating costs can be substantially lower. 

Mcor, based in Ireland, has been selling the technology in Europe since 2008, but just began marketing it in the U.S. last year. So far, McCormack says, the company has placed a few hundred machines with architects and product design engineers and is hoping it will catch on in the U.S. as a greener, and lower-cost alterative to the traditional 3D printing technologies. 

How it works 

Mcor Technologies' Matrix 3D printer builds an object, such as the model airplane shown above, one sheet at a time. It interleaves sheets of everyday office printer paper with layers of an adhesive that binds them. As the object rises up from the print surface (it takes 10 sheets of paper to build up 1 millimeter of height), tungsten carbide blades sculpt away excess paper that is not part of the design, creating a finished object up to 400 cubic inches in size. 

Objects can be rendered in color by varying the color in the paper bin.

 This 3D printer uses paper as the ink (ComputerWorld)

3D printing, Anti-consumerism, Thomas Jefferson, Occupy Wall Street: it's what binds the USA together

Dylan Tweney at VentureBeat.com has something to say about the intersection between 3D printing, the American pioneering spirit and current countermovements in contemporary culture and politics.

“We have a consumer product that’s anti-consumerist,” MakerBot Industries founder Bre Pettis told me at CES 2012, where I captured the short video below. “When you get a MakerBot, you have an alternative to buying things. You can download them … or you can design something and make it custom yourself.”

(...) I’m convinced that the people who have embraced the DIY movement have tapped into the core of what makes the United States great: Self-reliance, experimentation, innovation and a non-dogmatic reverence for facts. Over the decades, innovators tinkering in metaphorical (or literal) garages have played important roles in the development of electricity, radio, computers and, now, the internet economy.

DIY, or at least a willingness to take initiative for doing things on one’s own, outside the usual structures, has also played a role in political life, with grassroots organizations like MoveOn.org and loosely organized movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street drawing much of their strength from people’s iconoclasm and sense of self-sufficiency.

Dylan’s Desk: Saddle your horses and fire up the 3D printer